If you can solve your problem in an hour anyway...
You rent as many cpu-hours as you need. Need it by tomorrow, rent more CPUs; next week, fewer CPUs.
Also, this grid is running Solaris 10 on various Sun servers. I'm sure they can provide a cluster of Sun Fire 25Ks if you need to rent a few teraflops. When those teraflops aren't needed, their Grid Engine puts other tasks on those 25Ks, so they never go to waste.
Imagine the electricity, support costs, and staff for maintaining your own cluster. If you aren't keeping it running tasks 24/7/365, renting the time from Sun could be very cost effective. They are basically renting out their farm of thousands of CPUs as a compute hotel...by the hour.
That is roughly what I was trying to get at: the life of a monk vs. the life of a one-hour-a-week church-goer with a nice house, HDTV football, 1.73 kids, etc.
OSI: open source is good for many businesses, governments, and users, so why not.
RMS: the world won't be complete until all software is Free Software.
Both have a philosophical basis--but, it's like the difference between a monk and a regular Sunday Christian. Being a monk is certainly an honorable thing to do, but how many people are willing to do it?
"When will I trust them? When they either GPL Open Solaris or make it plain as plain can be that they will not use thier patents against any OSS developer - even RedHat."
Why is the GPL so important, when there are dozens of very popular OSS projects like Apache, Firefox, and X.org that do not use the GPL?
Groklaw.net has a new article about Sun clarifying their patents grant in the CDDL. They're working on it. The naysayers are going to feel foolish about all their recent FUD against Sun.
Sun released their binary only distribution of Solaris 10, today. OpenSolaris is coming later, under an OSI license.
And the "registration" is nothing, really. All you have to declare is the number of machines. Of course, read their Binary License Agreement, too.
This is all really no different than Sun did before with downloads for earlier versions of Solaris. Some details are different (it's cheaper, now), but the majority is the same.
You can still use Solaris 8 or Solaris 9. Besides, sun4m is already more than a decade old, and sun4u (UltraSPARC) is binary compatible with sun4m for applications.
Of course, there's always OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux for your older SPARC systems.
It's pretty sad when the head of a corporation can address foreign government officials as if he is an ambassador and negotiate terms for their government's operations. It's like pulling out the nuclear wild-card, except lawyers are the bombs.
How else could you explain your red nose, chubby belly, desire for milk and cookies, and why your mom always gets so sentimental on Christmas mornings?
The FUD from the GPL crowd is astonishing, given their history of receiving it en mass from Microsoft just a few years ago. Why is it that so many people are so damn quick in firing shots at Sun? If you don't think that Sun's intentions are genuine, you don't even have to waste another thought on OpenSolaris. You can go on with your lives as if nothing has happened. You can stay with Linux and the GPL, resting assured that code is not intermingling from Solaris. Sun's choice of license works both ways, you know.
Do you lose sleep at night about code from Free/Net/OpenBSD finding its way into Linux causing some sort of gigantic IP nightmare? If it didn't bother you for the last fifteen years, why start now?
This reactionary rhetoric against Sun is diluting the meaning of the word hypocrisy.
Actually, in my experience even this is a stretch... most joe bloggs' get their tech-literate friends or family members to hook them up. Even RCA cables are a challenge...
Which is fine, but even the most tech literate people struggle with upgrading PCs. Sure, a faster CPU isn't a big deal or perhaps another RAM module is fine, but, sometimes, a new video card or sound card or hard drive just sends the demons of software configuration hell up to ruin weekends everywhere.
It requires J2SE, and it's files are XML. This only makes sense if you are already programming in Java. If a project has no needed dependency on Java, then why force it?
Then why do people keep using TVs, DVD players, stereos, watches, telephones,...?
Because any Joe/Jane Public can hook together whatever he/she wants with some RCA cables and it have "good enough" for watching movies and TV. When the VCR chokes (it's mechanical, after all), buy another VCR for $40. When the amp is falling apart (much longer time than the VCR), but a nicer one.
Perhaps that's a key point: home entertainment doesn't all upgrade at the same time, and upgrading PCs is more difficult and more prone to failure (e.g., "WTF do you mean there is a conflict...why are there two sound cards with warning symbols on them?!?... why do you keep putting it back, I've removed it three times!... oh crap, now it doesn't boot..."... THUD... silence)
The problem Intuit has run into is that their software reached its full-featured peak around 1999 or 2000, after that there really wasn't anywhere for them to go.
Well, they have annual TurboTax updates. Do they have TurboTax in lock-step with upgrades to Quicken? That could be another way of forcing upgrades (e.g, "TurboTax 2009 works only with Quicken 2007 or later...").
Ever tried to build it from source? It is the worst "open source" program I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. Even building GNOME makes more sense.
All we can do, then, is wait. With everything I've read over the past month or so, I really don't think Sun intends to be misleading. They spent five years working towards OpenSolaris, aquiring the IP needed for it. They are walking a tightrope with lawyers shaking both ends, and, so far, they've managed to get 99% of the way to shipping an open system. This entire Slashdot discussion is speculation about details, about what-ifs, about things that Sun hasn't even showed signs of doing. Let's give them a few weeks to respond.
One thing I find quite remarkable is that in a couple of decades, make is still the only mainstream multi-language multi-platform build tool. The alternatives are either not widely used or are language-specific like Ant. With so many people not liking make, it's suprising an alternative tool hasn't really caught on.
And when I say "approach Sun about it" I mean, go straight past the PR know-nothings and talk to a Sun lawyer--someone who can talk to you in complete sentences.
If you are so bent out of shape over this, why not approach Sun about it? That would go further towards satisfying you than posting on Slashdot...but, then, you wouldn't be working to just turn people against OpenSolaris. I guess the latter provides a bigger benefit to you, personally.
Slashdot Mirror
If you can solve your problem in an hour anyway...
You rent as many cpu-hours as you need. Need it by tomorrow, rent more CPUs; next week, fewer CPUs.
Also, this grid is running Solaris 10 on various Sun servers. I'm sure they can provide a cluster of Sun Fire 25Ks if you need to rent a few teraflops. When those teraflops aren't needed, their Grid Engine puts other tasks on those 25Ks, so they never go to waste.
Imagine the electricity, support costs, and staff for maintaining your own cluster. If you aren't keeping it running tasks 24/7/365, renting the time from Sun could be very cost effective. They are basically renting out their farm of thousands of CPUs as a compute hotel...by the hour.
I find it hard to believe that there are even 150,000 to 300,000 software applications in the US.
Half of those are patents for each menu item in Microsoft Office.
I was about to say that Microsoft's only innovation was their model of business ethics, but, alas, even that ain't new.
Why the hell would they use Macs?
Everyone needs a role model.
That is roughly what I was trying to get at: the life of a monk vs. the life of a one-hour-a-week church-goer with a nice house, HDTV football, 1.73 kids, etc.
OSI: open source is good for many businesses, governments, and users, so why not.
RMS: the world won't be complete until all software is Free Software.
Both have a philosophical basis--but, it's like the difference between a monk and a regular Sunday Christian. Being a monk is certainly an honorable thing to do, but how many people are willing to do it?
If you're right, then, between the razor-sharp hockey sticks and the assault rifles, people better think twice before messing with Sun!
"When will I trust them? When they either GPL Open Solaris or make it plain as plain can be that they will not use thier patents against any OSS developer - even RedHat."
Why is the GPL so important, when there are dozens of very popular OSS projects like Apache, Firefox, and X.org that do not use the GPL?
Groklaw.net has a new article about Sun clarifying their patents grant in the CDDL. They're working on it. The naysayers are going to feel foolish about all their recent FUD against Sun.
This is Free Software?
Sun released their binary only distribution of Solaris 10, today. OpenSolaris is coming later, under an OSI license.
And the "registration" is nothing, really. All you have to declare is the number of machines. Of course, read their Binary License Agreement, too.
This is all really no different than Sun did before with downloads for earlier versions of Solaris. Some details are different (it's cheaper, now), but the majority is the same.
You can still use Solaris 8 or Solaris 9. Besides, sun4m is already more than a decade old, and sun4u (UltraSPARC) is binary compatible with sun4m for applications.
Of course, there's always OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, or Linux for your older SPARC systems.
It's pretty sad when the head of a corporation can address foreign government officials as if he is an ambassador and negotiate terms for their government's operations. It's like pulling out the nuclear wild-card, except lawyers are the bombs.
what would a closed format be in Microsoft's book?
A DRM system that kills the user after requesting the file. The perfect solution to the analog hole.
How else could you explain your red nose, chubby belly, desire for milk and cookies, and why your mom always gets so sentimental on Christmas mornings?
The FUD from the GPL crowd is astonishing, given their history of receiving it en mass from Microsoft just a few years ago. Why is it that so many people are so damn quick in firing shots at Sun? If you don't think that Sun's intentions are genuine, you don't even have to waste another thought on OpenSolaris. You can go on with your lives as if nothing has happened. You can stay with Linux and the GPL, resting assured that code is not intermingling from Solaris. Sun's choice of license works both ways, you know.
Do you lose sleep at night about code from Free/Net/OpenBSD finding its way into Linux causing some sort of gigantic IP nightmare? If it didn't bother you for the last fifteen years, why start now?
This reactionary rhetoric against Sun is diluting the meaning of the word hypocrisy.
Actually, in my experience even this is a stretch... most joe bloggs' get their tech-literate friends or family members to hook them up. Even RCA cables are a challenge...
Which is fine, but even the most tech literate people struggle with upgrading PCs. Sure, a faster CPU isn't a big deal or perhaps another RAM module is fine, but, sometimes, a new video card or sound card or hard drive just sends the demons of software configuration hell up to ruin weekends everywhere.
What's language specific about ant?
It requires J2SE, and it's files are XML. This only makes sense if you are already programming in Java. If a project has no needed dependency on Java, then why force it?
Then why do people keep using TVs, DVD players, stereos, watches, telephones, ...?
... why do you keep putting it back, I've removed it three times! ... oh crap, now it doesn't boot ..." ... THUD ... silence)
Because any Joe/Jane Public can hook together whatever he/she wants with some RCA cables and it have "good enough" for watching movies and TV. When the VCR chokes (it's mechanical, after all), buy another VCR for $40. When the amp is falling apart (much longer time than the VCR), but a nicer one.
Perhaps that's a key point: home entertainment doesn't all upgrade at the same time, and upgrading PCs is more difficult and more prone to failure (e.g., "WTF do you mean there is a conflict...why are there two sound cards with warning symbols on them?!?
The problem Intuit has run into is that their software reached its full-featured peak around 1999 or 2000, after that there really wasn't anywhere for them to go.
Well, they have annual TurboTax updates. Do they have TurboTax in lock-step with upgrades to Quicken? That could be another way of forcing upgrades (e.g, "TurboTax 2009 works only with Quicken 2007 or later...").
Why not use GnuCAsh?
Ever tried to build it from source? It is the worst "open source" program I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. Even building GNOME makes more sense.
All we can do, then, is wait. With everything I've read over the past month or so, I really don't think Sun intends to be misleading. They spent five years working towards OpenSolaris, aquiring the IP needed for it. They are walking a tightrope with lawyers shaking both ends, and, so far, they've managed to get 99% of the way to shipping an open system. This entire Slashdot discussion is speculation about details, about what-ifs, about things that Sun hasn't even showed signs of doing. Let's give them a few weeks to respond.
perhaps you haven't noticed the large number of opterons-running-linux that Sun has sold in the last quarter or two.
That Sun sells and supports Linux makes the anti-Sun lobby even more confusing. There are just a lot of people here with an ax to grind.
One thing I find quite remarkable is that in a couple of decades, make is still the only mainstream multi-language multi-platform build tool. The alternatives are either not widely used or are language-specific like Ant. With so many people not liking make, it's suprising an alternative tool hasn't really caught on.
And when I say "approach Sun about it" I mean, go straight past the PR know-nothings and talk to a Sun lawyer--someone who can talk to you in complete sentences.
If you are so bent out of shape over this, why not approach Sun about it? That would go further towards satisfying you than posting on Slashdot...but, then, you wouldn't be working to just turn people against OpenSolaris. I guess the latter provides a bigger benefit to you, personally.